hello everyone and welcome thanks for joining us today my name is andrew vasay i'm the chief solutions officer at new rocket we're here today to talk about the middle office what is it why is it important and more importantly how can we make it more efficient and more effective if you have questions for our panel today please put them in the chat we'll do our best to get to as many questions as we can our discussion today is with with two industry experts from servicenow and new rocket going to talk about their experiences and how we can help solve some of the challenges in today's middle office first i'd like to introduce angie campos from servicenow angie tell us a little bit about yourself hi everyone nice to meet you angie campos director and head of financial services for the commercial market in servicenow in this market we have over 90 of all financial institutions by volume i've spent my entire career in financial services starting with about 10 years in management consulting driving large-scale transformations across the enterprise for almost every function as well as digital customer transformation and then uh prior to servicenow was lead global financial services solutions and go to market at mulesoft great thanks our second panelist is uh chris pope from new rocket chris say hello hey andrew and angie so chris po chief innovation officer and and me are going to market lead rocket uh prior to this many of you may have seen me heard me i was at servicenow almost for 10 years running the uh innovation and evangelist team under dave wright chief innovation officer and prior to that i was a customer of servicenow uh three times back in 2007 and onwards um for those of you remember um back in the days of sort of the winter and the spring releases and i was customer number 10 originally and ironically at a bank as well so happy to be here and get on with the conversation thanks chris so let's get after our first question so let's start with just what is your view of the middle office what does it mean and and and where is it important to many businesses angie let's start with you yeah um so if you think about what financial services is it's the manage the business of managing risk and so when you think about division of responsibilities there's the front office and then the middle office where the front office is really around revenue generation interfacing with the customer and all the kind of administrative risk management activities are uh separated into the middle office but the middle office really has a much larger role i mean there are so many different types of risks that need to be managed within any given process but also uh different sources of data and procedures that need to be navigated and numerous systems and so there's a really important role of translation and being a broker as a middle office person you're translating the needs of the customer and the front office the relationship manager into what needs to be done internally through procedures through data through risk and all of the other components that go into facilitating a workflow whether it is hr or finance or et cetera chris how about your view yeah i mean very similar right we often talk about it being the service broker i think of that middle office of people process technology they bring it together then the glue like almost the elasticity right the regardless of what's happening at the front and the back they've been in the middle right and we hear a lot about investment in the front office new markets new products new offerings new services and then sort of behind the scenes that the rapid expansion and growth of technology and cloud et cetera then you get the bit in the middle that somehow has to pivot change adapt adopt and be very agile in what it does from a almost an upstream and a downstream standpoint and often you know i'm sure we're going to get into this not blessed with massive investment in technology automation and workflow maybe not the coolest or sexiest place to work kind of in the engine room if you will but i think without it everything stops right that piece in the middle that really sort of the sinew the tissue the neurons that connect almost of wow we're out there doing that that's kind of crazy wow we're going down that route with ai machine learning whatever how do we make it work in the middle right that's really where the genius is if you will in in many organizations and chris i think in our prior conversation we also talked about and we're talking very financial services today but middle office exists in some form in many businesses would you agree yeah absolutely you know whether i don't know you're a car dealer whether you're in retail whether you're manufacturing whether in pharmaceuticals right we just associate it with financial services but it's a little bit like workflow you look around and suddenly workflows everywhere god help you if you have the experience of the dmv or buying a home or whatever right there's workflow everywhere we just don't look at it that way so i think when you think of the middle office piece think of being a store worker right in retail or somewhere on that front line or or checking staff and an airline in an airport you ultimately want to get to the plane and travel but there's a bit in the middle again that you know and some of our customers have 300 subsystems in that middle that suddenly magically means you can get on a plane and fly but there's people to fly it there's a plane your banks get there it's all approved it's been checked it's got maintenance and facilities done it's the middle office we just call it something different and and i think another interesting point there is why have middle office workers and functions struggled to get good tools so maybe angie your thoughts there yeah i mean i think when you walk into a store i love that analogy chris um you walk into a store and everything's well done and that really impacts the experience that you have as a customer and similar to that notion there's been a ton of investment to make that experience seamless and and beautiful but really the work that has to get done you know all the all the activities to set up the products and the right places in the in the store and to translate those products into skus and all that all the things that make that work happen are unseen and so um there's been a lot of investment in creating that experience whether it's the digital engagement channels or the data management systems to ensure there's a 360 degree view of that customer so that you know who you're talking to at any point but what about the services that you need to be delivering to the the customer how does that all get done and it's an often forgotten and unseen thankless operation but honestly i think it's the greatest revenue generator because of uh this ability to change the speed of delivery of your services which impacts really um is the differentiation today in the digital world yeah and chris i think we spoke before about sometimes middle office teams they may have some tools that they work with or they may have some tools that they work around yeah you can expand on that a little yeah absolutely you know and and it's you know it's that old cobbler's children sort of scenario right um they're often sort of the recipient of technology as a byproduct or you know what we think is the right thing to do or the right thing to implement and they kind of look at it yeah actually you know what that doesn't make sense that can help us that can do certain things but at the other times they're not engaged as part of it you know we sometimes think we know better than the people that use the products right maybe not always true and you kind of sit there and go you know what we're tech sagging savvy enough that you find ways around things that you become accepting of it you know well that's the way it's always been we don't have any budget no one really invests in us you know what we'll just get on with it and in six months eight months chris will be gone there'll be a new broom we'll figure it out then right and i think they just become akin to that way of working and almost accepting that it's swivel chair it's cut its pace they're not integrated and look we've heard this story before we've seen this movie in it operations and and all these others right and in customer service as well i think the difference in the middle offices is volume and scale and if you go to some of these large you know financial institutions that andy was talking about yeah the volumes are bonkers right absolutely and you say where's the break point and you start doing less and you know versus and it's not about massive massive transformation but often it could be one small thing that you do hundreds of times a day times 100 people could revolutionize the organization rather than ripping it out and gutting it and starting again it could just be a small thing but it makes a material difference to the organization yeah i like the term that i think both of you used was that that middle office as a broker inside of the organization they're moving things from here to there making sure that it's all happening and and it's not a straight line it's a it's a web of information that's moving around next question i have for you is how much do you think how our middle office teams work with their tools is a function of how successful those tools are chris maybe first to you yeah we're getting very philosophical andrew um no i think you know it's kind of like should i work with it could i work with it is there a better way and can i influence it and i think you know if you sort of draw parallels to the consumer world we have choice we download apps on our phones if you're a man you don't read the instructions you don't really know how to use it so you delete it and do something else right whereas you look at it we have choice we can pivot in the enterprise you've done you're kind of given sometimes what you get right and and you're like yeah okay we'll be accepting of that it gives me enough to get by but i still love my little spreadsheets and my pivot tables and that enables me to do the work i need to do in worst case i'll send a teams message or a slack or you know an email to angie and she'll help me out because she's the person that can help me out but that breaks after a while and that sort of almost apathy in a way you know an acceptance but it builds in the organization and then when you finally get to that point of where you could change it you could transform it it's such a move it's like an act of congress it's a huge piece of work to do and you're like well maybe there's a better way to do this what is it we're struggling with is it data is it the process or is it the experience like angie said what if we just found a better way of navigating and joining the dots without having to sort of rip out the core dna maybe that's enough you know and i think when you look at the fintechs and the startup banks they're not doing anything different beyond opening a checking account or a savings account that's been around forever but what they've done is make it a much simpler and easier exercise to do it and they can do it because they've got no legacy right and i think when you look at it slightly different that way it's not a new problem to be solved but there's better ways of solving problems and that's where i think the potential is for the middle office to say we appreciate the work we understand the way the work but let's find a new way with new technology to make that a much simpler exercise yeah and i think angie before i go to you we're going to send out a poll to all of our our attendees just to hear from you how do you feel about the current tools you have available to you um i'd like to get get some input from our audience so andre i guess same question to you of you know how much do you think the troubles of the middle office are how they they interact and work with their tool set i think it's um it's a big part of that um i mean to build off of what chris said it's a lot of there's three kind of challenges right there's too much too many technologies too many lines of businesses too many functions uh the second is fragmentation right there's too many of them but each line of business or each function has their own view of what needs to be done and what they're using to do it and then the third is change change is happening constantly from a risk and regulatory perspective there's a new regulation every seven seconds change uh or there's merges and acquisitions there's growth new customer acquisitions and digital cut things are constantly changing and so when we think about middle office and operations it's really the heart the beating heart and the the circulatory the system of the entire body and in order to really think about a great experience we need to think about it from a holistic perspective chris you touched on this a lot with people process technology right and we talk about platforms and tool consolidation a platform should be thinking across the board of people process technology is it engaging everybody appropriately with a single view of what needs to happen are the processes constructed in a way so that there's an understanding of what needs to be done for each task and why because there's policy and risk associated with that and can they be consolidated to the point where you don't have to have two types of credit assessment workflows when they're very similar in and of itself so how can we create one system or one workflow that really can scale across multiple groups and then from a technology perspective it's integrating with all those systems out there why use a hundred systems and do that swivel chair from one system to another and keying in data which would which creates the risk of errors why not have it all integrated into a single platform when we talk about consolidation this is really it right but in in addition to those integrations you really you need that data model so that everybody's talking the same language and this is a big part of that middle office is that translation right of of customer needs this how does that translate into the systems and to the data and to the things i need to do and so a really that that holistic operating model and transformation takes into account all of that i think and so um as as business leaders in the audience i would really urge recommend you to really think about platforms from that perspective do they connect and unify all people do they have some a way to organize processes and scale them across multiple groups and from a data and integration perspective how does that help my integration and data management needs yeah chris uh maybe expanding on that i like the analogy of the the circulatory system as the platform um you know chris i know you have some thoughts along those lines yeah everything angie said it sounded smart for me um well i think you're right you know it's you know we talk about integrations and you know there are large technology organizations within financial services you know companies and i think many more badges of pride or the honors you know for almost creating the most complex fully integrated systems out there and whether you talk about big data and data lakes and enterprise service buses you know they're all great things and to some extent self-fulfilling i.t projects but what's the outcome for the people on the other end of it right and just because you create the most beautiful most complex connected thing if i still can't find the needle in the haystack it's still a needle in the haystack there's still elements of that circular system that the people element you still need to trust and verify that something is and i think you know i think angie you mentioned this earlier right people are making risk-based decisions or are material risk takers for an organization they act on data and they act on at some point not you know just in time or near real time and they're making a decision on behalf of the organization and the institution which you know somewhere down the road if we re all the way back to subprime and all that someone thought that was a great idea at some point right and it created the entire world um but you look at that circular system you can't ignore the people element of it and making it and you know experience is an overused word right we know that but they're experiencing their day-to-day job that when you connect the dots or join something or share a piece of data or collapse a platform you sort of say to it did i make you know andrew's job better tomorrow than it was today and if you can say yes and you can incrementally make those steps and say well actually hang on andrew relies on this piece of data now we could get that three steps earlier in the process at you know the point that that's entered into a system where it's fed through that actually automates that piece of the process now and it doesn't make andrew redundant it actually frees andrew up to do more critical thinking or more sort of empathetic problem solving to a client who might be going through a particularly difficult you know mortgage origination or whatever it may be you pivot and you free people up to do more human-centric things the mundane and repetitive tasks that let's be honest don't really add any value to your day yeah that's a great uh a great segue into into the first little segment i have prepared for us um obviously when we think about doing our work and service now we can do lots of reporting and dashboards and pull things out but one of the words that both of you have used around middle office is a lot of swivel sharing so the the first prepared little walk through i have for us taking a look at how one of those workflows actually works in service now so let's start that video if we can and here's a little demo what i've got is an example of onboarding a commercial customer so it's a very simple example but i think it hits on many of the things that we we talk about swivel chairing the first thing we want to help avoid our swivel chair is where am i in the process and you can see we've got something that we call a playbook and what that does is it shows me hey this section is already done and i can see who's accomplished each of these tasks and as the person working on this it drops me in at the the next step and i can see that we're in the due diligence step and we can see that we're on the know your customer actions and you know know your customers critical so we need to make sure that it's happening in a timely fashion we've assigned it to a person and i need to know how that person's doing they're going to come back with a result but what i find is is how overdue are they is often the question that we want to ask in a manual task it takes forever and we don't know here i can see we've attributed an sla to this specific task for this individual and they've got time left on the clock you know we're doing okay against our customer commitment i think that's a really big part of swivel sharing is we lose sight of that you know how are we doing on our process and so this view gives that sort of middle office uh person that's working the process a view of who's doing what who owes what and it fans that information out automatically instead of pivoting back and forth in my chair it gives us access to all the information about this particular onboarding of a customer including how am i doing on my my time stages and my sla and i can see that overall i've still got some time on the clock we're doing okay we're meeting our commitments the other thing we talked about is the need for flexibility in the tool so what i want to show is a little bit of we'll call it the back end but it's not the crazy coding backend this is how did we design that process in a way that's readable as a business user i can see here are all the steps that are happening so it's the same thing that we were just looking at at the front end but a little touch of the back end and i can see where i've created some additional steps to wait for things to be completed don't start the next task until this one's done and i can see as i'm going through each of the processes it's fairly organized and i can read it and understand it and in terms of flexibility i want to add another step to those checks i saw along the the left-hand side well i'm going to add another swim lane essentially here's a new column in this workflow that says let's go verify some of this information and let's not start that because we're mailing some things to a customer so wait a few days before we start calling now we need somebody to take some action so let's just add a task create a task that says you know assign it to the agent that's working it and make sure they call the customer i think this is a really powerful element that servicenow has added in for us to be able to build workflows that are understandable and and start to get the swivel chair out and we've replaced our swivel chair with this kind of a view um so just an example of you know how do we how do we get the swivel chair out and start to really work in a tool notable that that view that we were looking at was in a brand new servicenow instance all i did was install the modules and start to run through so some of those out of the box capabilities that servicenow can bring to bear give us a great starting point so we're getting at you know onboard the customer but kyc activities and and and so on so i see we have some of our our poll results back um let's take a look at what people thought about their tools so 50 said automated and love their tools which is honestly kind of surprising i mean many many of the places where we go we actually get the next highest answer which is manual hate them or it's counterpart tools what tools um let's see manual love them and automated hate them got zero percent also a little interesting number so i think it's an interesting interesting piece of data for us you know we've got automated tools what kind of comes to mind for me is is they're automated but how connected are they within the enterprise angie to your point you know can we pull risk and compliance data from those tools um how do they connect to other tools where are the integration points and and where does that happen um maybe i guess sort of capture your thoughts on the fly angie first on just sort of what our poll results are talking to us about yeah i am i'm surprised by the automated love them the high the high response rate of that one as well however i can see it being um within a view of your job when you think about when you step back and look across functions across groups that's when really the rubber hits the road right so that example that you showed with the demo of onboarding a customer with aml kyc is there if the automation the experience of automating that process might be amazing however it does the risk function have appropriate visibility on how many times a high risk rating was given to a customer across the board per their policy and if there was a a flag on there suspicious activity report flagged do we have a view of all of them across the board and how that exceeds or go meets the or is under our our risk tolerance um from a technology perspective if my system is down does that impact my onboarding processes that information the more and more you're able to zoom out and connect all that data together really that's where true business transformation and outcomes happen um so maybe you know there's there has been a lot of investment in automation overall i mean we're in the digital era so i guess the 50 doesn't totally surprise me but then i would again really um challenge the the audience to think about stepping back and looking across the enterprise yeah and chris your thoughts on on our results yeah i would probably yeah i'd probably say the same right but i think if you look at tools what tools right when you think about it what is a tool what is an application right it's how long would be the string and i think you know there are countless examples of customers i've worked with where they've digitalized the front end i think you showed some steps in there that were talking about onboarding the customer and those things right and it was beautiful it was branded it was slick all those good things but because the regulators still required a wet signature they still had to print the paperwork and you're like well hang on we've made a little bit of it better for the customer arguably it's the right thing to do but then the bit of the actual work that the bank were doing was no different whatsoever and they were like great we just get more work faster but we still need to do the same um you know and automating a bad problem only means you fail faster in a much more transparent way right and i think you look at that and you say automated love them great but are they fully and when we say automated are they connected i think to your point as well yes a single thing or whatever and i think this is where you've also seen the onset of rpa tools you know that that mimic human behavior because you know legacy is what it is you know whether it's mainframes and other green screen technologies they're not going away because they tend to work right um and they work for a very long time um but connecting them mimicking that behavior right and if you can do that and free up just a little bit of time before i need to go and fight the next fire that's a good thing for me but i think connecting the end-to-end journey is really where the value is um but also do you have a voice to be able to to change that that's really hard to do and whilst you've always got that burden of you know i remember back in the days of you know when jb jamie dimon was with i think a congress on the hill talking about why all these problems have come on in the banking system he said i have two and a half thousand consultants running around every day all they do is respond to the new regulations and risks you put on us i'll never keep up it's not and you know this industry is built around this stuff as a result and i think if you look at that instead but step back a little bit excuse me and say what's the problem we're trying to solve but who are we solving for that then gives you another way of sort of moving forward and to some extent shakes that technology and automation direction yeah yeah and to our participants i i'd encourage you if you have questions uh please post them in the chat and i'll i'll throw a challenge out to our participants to see if you have a one of the challenges i found is i was actually working some workshops with a financial institution and i had a handful of folks in the room and we're trying to get aligned and we found out it the light bulb went on when one group said well we have a team we call cash management and another group said we have a group called management of cash we talked about them for probably 10 minutes until we figured out it was this clean group i sometimes call the mic and michael problem you know when we we start to integrate our systems and think about digital transformation you know i know someone as mike in our directory it's michael maybe we're merging systems where some data was good some was bad so my question sort out to the audience would be do you have those kinds of mic and michael problems or cash management management of cash problems um that we can maybe uh wait i think andrew just on that point is quite funny a very large bank i work with and you know they're implementing cmdb and a bunch of other stuff one of the things they were really keen on was the name of an application or a service but then they had a list of aliases that it's also known as you know angie calls it something else but that what it meant was when you went and searched for informational knowledge depending on who you are where you come from it the technical it's like email outlook exchange 365. all the cool things but they actually maintained the library of alphabet soup that people could actually find the information they looked for versus trying to standardize on a single name yeah yeah yeah and to our audience that i'm asking for questions i'll also extend an invitation to join us for a follow-up session on may the 5th come have drinks with our experts we're going to make margaritas together so at the end of our session we're going to throw up a qr code and a way for you to sign up but come bring your questions to us there and we'll make some margaritas and answer more questions with the side of alphabet soup just kidding yeah and also uh if you if any of our attendees are planning on attending servicenow's knowledge conference uh we will be there look for uh for chris and myself and angie will be participating in some of the different events so uh we hope to see you there maybe let's let's go on to a little bit of we've used the term workflow a handful of times do you think our our business managers understand the term workflow in the way that we use it in in our landscape maybe andrew i'll start with you yeah i i don't i don't know i still talk to customers a lot of customers and they they just come back and ask aren't you just a i.t ticketing tool and i say oh goodness we're starting from the bottom so um really since i've joined i've been with servicenow for two years even within the two years i've been here my whole kind of perception has changed to kind of start when i started i kind of saw this opportunity for middle office transformation and not just middle office transformation but operating model transformation to connect front middle and back office across the board with this with the unifying system of engagement where it makes sense or integrated integration to other systems of engagement um but now it's more i when i think of about it from the from the context of where we are with the market and just the digital world i kind of think of it as the digital bridge um and i know that sounds pretty philosophical behind the sky but i can bring it down to something a little bit more uh translatable so when we you think about how work gets done um it's all especially in financial services is the passing of data and data only resides in system of records and so system of records their kind of role in the operating model is to hold that data of what happened where uh on what how exactly um etc but then what we kind of we've branded ourselves um as a system of action so you know we talked about swivel chair and it's that that act of taking a piece of data on one screen and system to the other and inputting that um that's the bridge that i'm talking about with the the digital bridge right the system of action that helps to kind of move that data across the board to fuel workflow and it could be any data and the reason i call that a bridge is because you know i talked about change happening constantly systems are changing organizations are changing so as those systems are changing on the back end you still you've essentially abstracted your actions your services in a single place where now you have this unmatched visibility across the board because i think with the servicenow platform an area of differentiation is the fact that we're all operations right we touch i t we're a system of record for all your it assets we can connect to your system of record for all your employee employee information employees and information about them um as well as facilities and vendors and so with any given item action we have the ability to map that to any part of our platform so onboarding happens you can't or i forgot to say one key area of system of record that we can act as is risk and compliance your risk register and so imagine taking an onboarding process and any given tasks like conducting a know your customer action that can be mapped to the underlying technology that it's performed on the risk policy the control even uh the people and maybe even their their own license you know updates or compliance risk assessments and so now we've kind found ourselves in this new era of service 360. you know the last 10 15 years is customer 360 but now it's this holistic view of your service to really drive operational resilience sure yeah and chris may be saying to you of you know workflows and and how do we help our customers understand the way that we think about workflows i you know i i still think it's to some extent it's still a nerdy techy thing right and it's what we talk about and we're very comfortable with but you know does your mama understand what workflow is for your grandma i don't know and i always try to think of it a little bit simpler and so you know really there's only four things that you do you need help or you need advice right number one the second is you need to request or um get something right new product new service you might need to modify something or change something that you've already got an existing capability or service we just need information they're the four things right now they feel very like help change request knowledge very i t itsm and probably a little bit to your point angie where the ticketing tool idea comes from right but i think if you go under the covers and think about what i sort of three words i describe servicenow as is forms based workflow right you capture data something smart with it now that could be a human making the decision reviewing based on the data around them or contextual or it could be machine driven right automated streamlined understood calculated ai machine learning etcetera and predictive and it moves through the process but i think when you look at it that way and sort of from an outcome or a value stream mapping by doing this it enables that which occurs this to happen and if you go back to those four things you know it's become too easy to do things in email right and almost instant gratification but you lose audit you lose control you lose visibility reporting analytics and so on right which is why platforms like servicenow exist but then when you look at that it's not just to move the problem that you had in email and spreadsheets into the platform you've actually got the opportunity to change the way it works and change the way people work and it fundamentally comes down to those four buckets of things and you say well some of them are very simple to do right sort of request fulfill action complete others are actually hang on chris is struggling here this requires not just a standard knowledge article or sop or automated workflow response this is a stressful situation this is a moment that matters it's a life-changing moment because of what we're doing insurance health whatever it doesn't matter the humans still require to step in but when they do the workflow supports them providing them all the information of what happened before and potentially what can happen next to guide that conversation so i solely focus on you the customer and the outcome no ask you all the same questions you get the answers that you gave to andrew a week ago about oh well andrew's in a different department i don't work with andrew and he's not here today where's the history what am i trying and it's just a poor experience whereas it's connected you know it's automated it's integrated and then you said you know it's about moving the data around at the right time with the right controls then you create a much better experience for people as a result and you know it's it sounds quite simple but i think the more simplistic you make it in the description the more chance you've got of people understanding it and when they create an emotional connection and see themselves in it they're more likely to do it and then the resistance to change is lower yeah and you both mentioned the the risk the compliance aspect of it and and i know from my experience in that space many times the expense and you know the cost and burden on the organization of chris you mentioned you know banks going up on the hill to talk about the burden of regulatory compliance many cases the source of the cost is actually collecting and gathering evidence and proving that things happened so it's probably you know for those that are thinking about you know where's my business case for my middle office we can take a look at well you know how much time do we spend trying to cobble together evidence if i can change that to a push button exercise because we did it through an automated set of steps which is workflow and that's what we showed in our little example earlier you know there's a there's a real good case that your state of compliance can improve significantly when you just take something that was an email and you automate it you know the ability to reliably track that information is powerful stuff and then we extend it a little further and think about the idea of resilience you know the pandemic has forced us to think rethink what we think resilience means well if i know you know step one goes to angie and step two goes to chris and we had an interruption in between step one and two but my my system of record for that work and that workflow lets me know where do we leave off and when chris picks up at his new location um or or a new person comes to to fulfill that role we know where it is and by nature just putting those things into a tool make us much more you know resilient seems like simple things but i agree with you chris like the more simple we can make it and explain it the better it is for compliance the less risky it is and the more resilient it is sorry just you just totally reminded me and this happened to your boss ng by the way brilliant technology all those good things failover systems systems of record etc no one planned for a flood and the ceiling lapsed in the building and they went well where do our people now go inside to it not just people or sorry not just technology it's the people element that's why you say well and then you come back to the age old bcp dnr and bcm it's a big part of it now you could argue every organization just got an ex extortion amount of facilities added to their you know their playbook if you will because everyone works from home but then that adds other you know restrictions and capabilities around it or dependencies that you never had to manage before that makes me think about the another point that i've um i'm glad you reminded me of that i didn't think about bringing up here but you know we talk about workflow and automation uh and you know andrew you talked about how even you document or automating that workflow and having an audit trail of what happened in and of itself is a huge lift of burden from a risk and regulatory perspective but take uh our the servicenow platform which is really looking at major product suites looks at automating uh operations for any given function right so if you've automated a workflow in the line of business around onboarding we've also have the capabilities to automate the entire enterprise risk and compliance management life cycle so i i talked about the linkages of data and how powerful that can be but what about the linkages of workflows coming together chris to your point on building goes out what are the risk management or the continuity workflows that then come in to fix that and drive resilience yeah and that's a great uh a great setup for the the next little demo element i have prepared for us because i think in our discussion today it comes back to the individual employee and and you know how do they get work done so if we take a look at our next video what i've got here is is an example of how we build an employee experience uh in the servicenow platform because pulling that work together making it easy for our employees to actually be able to do their work uh i would argue is is as important if not more important than getting our workflows right so if we think about the resilience situation i moved to a new location what do i need to do first second third that's where we want to get to uh let's see so i think we're having trouble with our video demo so maybe we'll talk about experience a little bit so i think where servicenow is unique and it's a particular specialty of ours at new rocket is thinking about the the end user experience and thinking about end user empathy and as as many clients that i've worked with always chuckle you know are we inflicting a system on them or are we providing them something that they actually want to to engage with and it makes their lives easier so chris maybe maybe you first or the experience itself what do i see as an end user how do you see that fitting into folks strategy around tools yeah i think it you know gone are the days of looking pretty and rounding the corners on rectangular boxes but you know what you can't get away from a lot of this is still data entry right it is what it is now you can challenge how the data gets there number one but also i think it's about context right where am i in the process what's the it's like an information architect right what's relevant when is it relevant and does it help me make the next decision whereas i think historically it's almost like you see these forms or or designs in some platforms and everything's on the screen at once and you're like how on earth do i even make head no tale of this right and there's um it reminds me way back you know i used to travel a lot at servicenow and i checked into a hotel once and you know what they're like they're tippy-tapping away and you're like what the hell are you doing and i asked could i go count by the counter and see what they're doing and they made 174 keystrokes to check me in and i'm like what are you doing like all these fields we don't even use them we just tap past them because no one's ever going to change it we're just going to get over it but we walk around the process to get your key mr pope and you look at that and you say well what if there was a better way of doing it but for the point in time with the data that you've got i've checked in i've pre-checked in i've got my profile you've got my loyalty you've got my id i'm going to give me a card what the hell is it you need to do right and i think when you apply that of course it's more complex in financial services we get that right but i think what's the decision i need to make based on the data i have and we assume a perfect process every time that that's not true it's about sometimes managing the exceptions right and if i've got 100 things to do in a day and i know 90 of them are good to go don't even show me let me focus on the 10 the exceptions or the breakages form of a better word and i think you know if we look at some of the work that we've done with banks has been non-i.t work but around settlement right trip back-end not the processing of trades necessarily but the breakages where things have gone wrong or not quite balanced at the end of the day or whatever an exception management but then to pivot into so what and you were saying about risk is where we've got material risk takers or controls that are registered required in this case related to mifid in in emir you know can we demonstrate those controls but also where we've got algorithm trading and all those fun things going on it's not the machine that being let loose we've actually got that trust that verifying the audit trail in place that we can go really really really fast but we understand what it's doing what it's doing and where it's doing it and as you said as a point in time there's an orbit trail and i think the experience of that then is how do you expose it and make it meaningful and contextual to the end user not based on the best some amazing developer can pull together we know developers can build things but you know could you build it should you build it that's the that's the ask right unless sometimes it's more because it allows me to focus on making the right decision and not have to swim through all the noise that really doesn't add any value to the situation or the decision i'm about to make yeah and i think we have our video loaded up so let's take a look at a sample of an experience built in service now so this is a an example that that we at new rocket have built and and the first thing you'll notice is that it's personalized so what's interesting in the way service now lets us provide an experience to someone is it knows who you are so i know who you are let me present things to you that are useful and relevant to your day um and you know at new rocket one of our key focuses is design so let's make sure it's clean it's not cluttered and it reflects you know your organization's view on how things should look and feel and let's put all of those things that you're going to need access to whether it's you know in my example here here's popular items things that you have to use frequently let's get to them quickly things that you need to approve or things that maybe you need to know about so for example if there's an i.t outage and wi-fi is out well that's useful to know and frankly might be activating some of those continuity and resilience plans and when we looked at the workflow example earlier of those tasks going out to do kyc if you're on the kyc team something shows up on your on your main portal here that says under my activities i need to complete the following things so being able to start to deliver that unifying employee experience i think is a really important element in our strategy as a service now and pardon me digital transformation um disconnected systems can just cause frustration across the board um what we want to be able to do is start to show here is this portal even if some of these actions like i need remote access and that needs to take me somewhere else let's get that portal experience in a central place let's get it easy and accessible and let's make sure that it's changing colors and and forms and layouts based on your needs as an employee is uh julie's fluent in latin so yes that's intro as well angie i know servicenow spends a lot of time on user experience maybe just give us a few minutes on kind of your thoughts on how we're doing user experience differently yeah i think um so there's two parts here there's the user experience in delivery so workflow needs to be designed developed and before it's opera before it's implemented and then there's ongoing operation of it now the development um of the workflow design of that workflow has we've invested a ton in making that easy um that process automation manager that you pulled up is exactly how easy it is and imagine all this need for change new workflows regulatory changes that are requiring changes to workflow um that can be done by anyone that doesn't need have to know code you can just a simple drag and drop uh and the the nice thing about how we've architected the platform is that each of those little boxes that you saw is not just a task it has the whole kind of operating model components to it the people process and technology so it comes with the right engagement um system or the the interaction component to the right persona um the process itself uh the integration uh with the data that it needs to come that needs to come out of the system that houses that data and so as you're moving around moving things around uh you're creating you're configuring new workflows it's not a customization and so what that does is we're seeing customers where in my previous life as a consultant it would take a year and a half to transform a digital experience but we're seeing it in weeks and it's incredible um and then you think about uh kind of the ongoing governance of that if i'm going to give all my line of business ability to create the workflows how do i manage that so we've invested a ton in governance capabilities too on the operation piece of it you know this i can't say enough about how like how much of my experience is um about simplicity of knowing where to go for what uh and i just got a new laptop and everything has changed so i don't know where anything is but when you think about the servicenow portal as a as just your place to work that's where for the first time in my career i'm at a company where i need to do this or that or get a new laptop or get it get network access it's one portal even for my customer one portal it's one place to go it's seems so simple but the outcome is incredible yeah yeah and you mentioned being able to get moving quickly and i think one of the things that servicenow has done and continues to do is to add industry specific pre-built workflows i was able to do a demo of something that all i had to do was turn it on and it shows us here's the here's the great starting point so maybe angie can talk a little bit about what financial services means to service now in in that way from a product yes i'm so glad we're talking about this um i can't believe that there's a platform like this out there um and and i work for that company uh what we've done you know i mentioned earlier about how we've essentially created various product modules all on this single platform that automates every function and now we're doing it in the line of business where it's arguably the greatest area of expense and revenue potential and so we're looking basically across the entire value chain of financial services we started in banking we just went live with insurance and we continue to add breadth and depth to this product set that also can talk to natively every other product set and product suite on our platform the way that we've designed it is you know thinking about how we can transform the operating model so people process technology we've created uh we've identified the personas for any given function or financial services whether it's deposits or payments or loans identified all those personas uh created persona specific ui that the our customers can choose to use or integrate with a different engagement system from a process perspective we've broken out these workflows and really think of them as building blocks yes we have a couple you know a few a good set of out-of-box workflows but chances are your workflow is going to be very different from the your the bank down the street or the insurance company down the street and so the ability to kind of drag and drop and reuse those workflows that has been broken down into those kind of building blocks those boxes that you saw on um process automation manager in in andrew's demo and then from a technology or data technology perspective um we're starting to build out out of box applications to key systems of record that will facilitate these workflows as well as align all of that to a single data model that we've now expanded to include all financial services yeah and chris angie mentioned that you know sometimes we need to extend what servicenow has done and we've got some real good experience there maybe we can talk a little bit about that yeah i think you know you what do you think of an 80 20 or a 70 30 fit a lot of what out of the box is good enough for some right particularly if you're coming from spreadsheets a legacy platform unintegrated manual email you know it's been a regular service now story across every vertical or industry they approach but i think when you look at the fundamentals of workflow assignment reporting analytics automation the process designing you showed you know their generic their platform capabilities you can throw at anything and what we actually showed in the demo is that any different than when we put sticky notes on the wall and start to plan our work and do everything no but we're just doing it in a much better tech enabled way that allows to automate processes but also get insight into the data that maybe um we wouldn't see before as humans that maybe the machines can help us with and you know and countless examples of where we've worked with financial institutions to some of those examples earlier around post-trade settlement exception management etc but actually what one of those came to us and said hang on this workflow thing's really cool we saw it whatever could you build a property management tool on it for us around managing our real estate and our assets because those large contractual commitments you know reporting around it huge financial commitments but also it relates to the safety and security of our employees are building our assets our information our data you can keep going right um so using exactly the same fundamentals that we built these you know non-iit applications for the business on we built a global property tracker that's now got 71 buildings tracked and managed and operating and it's now even gone to a level where when you submit a request to have access you know as part of a new hire maybe you you move from one department to the other and you need access to a different floor or different room whatever it's requested through the same portal where i don't say my laptop's completely broken or i need a new app or you know i'm approving something i can actually go and say hey you know and it gets approved and my badge is permissioned and i know i'll get access what have we done we've become that data broker we've become that automated workflow and integrated what would have been historically fill in the pdf print it sign it down attach it send it right that's what we've done when you think about it and i think you you know if you look at those types of processes as an organization you know they're everywhere they're absolutely everywhere you know fortunately able to visit customers between whilst traveling you get to reception and there's that big red book that you sign in and say who you are and who you're visiting where does that ever our alarm goes off you know if vendors are in the building maybe you leave them a little bit just to create a bit of stress um but what happens when it's full well they put it under the counter and then grab the next one and you think about health security physical security safety you know and think about the perception you have when you turn up at that building you think okay what's this going to be like versus there's an ipad there's something that you check in on it notifies angie i'm in the building your visitors here grant them wi-fi access as a guest great experience my perception of you as a company changes in terms of your digital thinking and use of technology it just drives a better conversation versus the alternate right and you're like oh god here we go this is going to be cool you already know it's going to be difficult right yeah and i go to that you know example of the dmv come on really no one no one enjoys that progress right yeah so we're coming up on our close to our closing time so i'll remind our audience to hang in there till the end to get your code to be able to join us for cocktails uh on may 5th uh angie 30 seconds to you any closing thoughts yeah be creative uh you know we talked about just all the goodness of connecting data and workflows functions um the platform can really do anything and to drive that your transformation um objectives really think about how all of that can be brought into a tool that really where you can be creative with your with you know all the outcomes and linkages so um thank you all so much for your time yeah thanks and chris 30 seconds to you any closing thoughts yeah i would yeah i would think about you know not the massive hairy audacious problems but what are those simple things you do daily repetitively that are frustrating and start small prove the value prove the success and then grow it and then find the next one and the next one and the next one and over time you probably find you've done an automated 50 60 of your daily work that's only a good thing right with small incremental very achievable measurable steps yeah that's that's great advice so uh for anybody that would like to schedule a follow-up with our teams the servicenow and new rocket teams you'll be able to join us for cocktails on may the 5th so uh angie and chris thank you so much for your time today great discussion really appreciate it all our attendees thanks for joining us and we'll see you on the next one thanks all thanks andrew thank you cheers you